


soar, wheel, gulp, and dive

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 05:26:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1014666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Bucky have had two first kisses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	soar, wheel, gulp, and dive

**Author's Note:**

> Fleshed out from the trope meme. Thanks to Amberlynne for handholding and reading it over.

Steve's been so sick, so often, that Bucky's grown used to it. Steve's made it through the chicken pox, lived through the flu every winter since Bucky's known him, fought through asthma attacks the way he fights bullies: bloody and bowed, but unbroken in the end. Which is why he lets himself forget, sometimes, how sickly Steve really is. He's grown up some, but he'll never be tall or broad; at seventeen, he still looks twelve, bony and narrow, with skin as translucent as the onion skin pages in the Rogers family bible they've lugged with them from place to place since they aged out of the orphanage.

Steve coughs again, the spasm wracking his whole body. Bucky sits beside him on the bed, rubbing his back gently, the knobs of his spine sharp even through the layers of clothing he's wearing. The radiator hisses and clanks, and smell of wet wool fills the room.

Bucky thinks about putting his wet coat on and going back out into the storm to track down old Doc Winters and beg him to come and look at Steve, but as soon as he shifts his weight as if to get up, Steve wraps a hand loosely around his wrist. 

"Don't go," he murmurs. "Bucky, please."

"Just gonna get you more aspirin," Bucky says, standing slowly. The way Steve's hand slips away from his is worrisome, but Bucky tamps down his concern, forces himself to sound cheerful and confident. He takes the last two aspirin out of the tin Mrs. McCourt from down the hall had given him when she heard Steve was sick again, and refills Steve's glass with water. He places the pills in Steve's palm and holds the glass to his shivering lips once he's put them in his mouth. "Bottoms up."

Steve frowns but gulps the water down before he sinks back onto the bed, expending even that much energy too much for him.

Bucky brushes Steve's hair back from his forehead, which burns against Bucky's palm. He hasn't prayed regularly since his ma died, but he offers up a Hail Mary as he slides into the bed and curls up behind Steve, trying to will his fever to break.

Bucky doesn't sleep much that night; he spends most of it panicking and praying in the silence of his own head. Steve shivers and shakes against him, the rattle in his chest echoed by the rattle of the bedroom window as wind and rain lash against it. 

Bucky alternates Hail Marys with the single, fervent wish that Steve not die, not here, not now, not like this. Steve is meant for better things, and Bucky wishes he could give them to him, give him more than a cold water flat on the fifth floor of a rickety old tenement that smells like cat piss and cabbage, give him a job and a girl and a life that doesn't grind him down in a world that recognizes him as the good man he is, the great man he could become, if only he survives.

Around three a.m., Steve's breathing evens out and he starts shrugging off the various blankets and sweaters cocooning him. His skin when Bucky finds him beneath the covers is cool and clammy, his undershirt soaked through with sweat.

Steve grunts and rolls onto his back, towards Bucky. He squints in the darkness. "Bucky?"

"I'm right here, pal." His voice is a little rough--he pretends it's from being woken up, not from relief--and he clears his throat. "How you doing?" 

"Thirsty," Steve answers. "Better."

"Good," Bucky says, helping Steve into a sitting position. He wraps one arm around Steve's skinny shoulders and reaches for the warm glass of water on the bedside table with the other. "Here."

Steve drains the glass and holds it out for more. When he's done, he hands the glass back to Bucky and snuggles down into his blankets. Bucky refills the glass one more time and puts it back on the bedside table. He stands there, torn by the desire to climb back into the bed with Steve, to keep watch over him and make sure the fever doesn't come back, and the knowledge that they're too old to cuddle under the covers together, even while Steve's ill, and he should really go back to his own bed.

"C'mere," Steve says, twitching the covers at him, and since it's what he really wants to do anyway, Bucky climbs back in beside him. He's rank with illness and sweat, but his skin is cool to the touch and he's not coughing, so Bucky doesn't care. "Night."

"Night." Bucky brushes Steve's damp hair off his forehead and Steve's eyes flutter closed, his breathing evening out quickly. Before he can think better of it, Bucky brushes his lips across Steve's, chastely, nothing like the kisses he gives the girls from the block. It's a kiss barely worthy of the name, he thinks, as soft as the brush of an early morning breeze or a butterfly's wing and communicating nothing of the intensity of what he actually feels for Steve. His heart flutters at the contact and he thinks it might just fly right out of his chest. He can hear Steve's breath hitch, but he doesn't open his eyes. Bucky lies back down, and pretends it never happened. It's a long time before he's able to fall asleep.

Later, decades and continents later, after they've both been lost and found, Bucky finds himself sharing an apartment with Steve again. This time, Bucky's the one who wakes up in a cold sweat more often than not, and needs Steve to talk him around afterwards. Here and now, it would be acceptable for Steve to crawl into bed with him, but he never does, and Bucky never asks. He knows he doesn't deserve that kind of coddling, as much as he knows Steve would give it to him in a heartbeat if he asked. Because he still wants so much more than that, both for Steve and from him, and he knows the latter will never happen, so he's remembering how to be satisfied with the former. Because Steve finally has everything Bucky wanted for him, back when he was skinny and sick and Bucky was his only friend. The way Bucky figures it, everything else is gravy.

They're getting ready for yet another fundraiser (neither of them ever say no to veterans' organizations, though Bucky still feels like a cheat and a fraud when they call him a hero), and Bucky is fussing with his hair and trying to decide between two ties that are so boring they make him yawn to look at them. 

"And on top of having to tie myself into this noose," he says, "I'm going to miss the football game." He tugs the knot into place and frowns at himself in the mirror. He avoids looking at himself whenever possible--he feels like he's been looking at his face forever, but his face has barely changed. It creeps him out sometimes. Still, he plasters on a swaggering grin, always ready to fake it for Steve, and says, "I'm still a handsome devil."

"And so modest," Steve answers wryly but he doesn't look up from his sketchpad. Steve is already dressed, of course, perfectly pressed and primped, and patiently waiting for Bucky to finish. The pencil in his hand moves skillfully across the page. He's always been good at entertaining himself while waiting around for Bucky. Bucky feels a pang of something--regret, maybe, or guilt. He spent so long not being allowed to have feelings that sometimes he can't identify them anymore.

"What are you drawing?" He watches Steve in the mirror, hoping Steve can't tell. 

"Nothing much." Steve shrugs diffidently. "Same thing I always draw." 

Which tells Bucky jack shit, because Steve can fill a notebook with nothing but sketches of birds and clouds. But he can see the faint hint of a blush in Steve's cheeks. "Lemme see." Steve tries to cover up, but his heart's not really in it, or Bucky takes him by surprise, because Bucky gets the book easily enough. And then he feels like he's been punched in the gut.

He sees himself reflected on the page through Steve's eyes, and has to take a breath to steady himself. He looks like some kind of hero, like he actually belongs at Steve's side again instead of rotting in a prison somewhere. He gets a funny, fluttery feeling in his chest, like his heart has grown wings and is trying to soar. "Doesn't look like nothing to me." Steve doesn't answer, but his fingers twitch and tighten around his pencil. "Steve?" 

Steve reaches up and tugs him down by his tie into a scorching kiss that answers his question. Bucky's head spins, and he tumbles into Steve's lap, crushing the sketchpad between them. He doesn't even care that Steve's hands are messing up his artfully disheveled hair, because Steve's mouth is hot and wet beneath his, and Steve's tongue is curling over his in long, rough strokes. Bucky moans into the kiss, his hands tangling in Steve's perfectly gelled hair, making it stand up on end and making his fingers sticky in the process. 

"Mmm," he says when Steve lets him up for air. "That was a pretty spectacular first kiss."

"Second," Steve says softly, running his thumb along Bucky's tingling lower lip. "That was our second kiss. You might've forgotten, but I never did."

Bucky freezes for a moment, and then the memory slots into place. He flushes, embarrassed for the dumb, terrified kid he'd been. "I was just happy you were alive. I thought you were asleep."

"Safer that way," Steve replies, ducking his head. "I was too afraid of losing you to make anything of it. I've never been very brave about," he gestures between them, "this."

Bucky wraps his hand around the nape of Steve's neck and presses his forehead to Steve's forehead. "I've never met anybody braver," he says. Then he smiles. "Or stupider. Sometimes, it's a tossup."

"Shut up and kiss me again," Steve says, tugging on his tie once more, so Bucky does.

end

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Feather, Halo, Hook and Line" by Erik Amundsen.


End file.
